There’s something warm and aesthetic about cork, and it’s biodegradable.

Having traveled through the cork forests of Portugal, I know that taking cork from a tree is like sheering sheep. After harvest, the trees are marked with the year they were harvested, and allowed to grow more layers for the next nine years. (Imagine how tiny a cork would be if only one layer was allowed to grow before harvest.) It takes nine layers to return the cork’s depth to a point that will allow for the creation of more usable cork with depth for wine bottles.

If we have the ability to remain natural, what is the advantage for people and the environment to become unnatural?

In this picture of a cork tree, you can see that it was harvested in 2007. I took this in November 2009, and it was two years later, so you can barely see the date. It does continue to show in the bark, so cork harvesters know when the tree is ready once again.

I know that plastic, glass, and stelvin closures (twist offs) are alternative, and have created lots of jobs for lots of people, but I’m still an old hippie, as my friend the Cosmic Muffin used to call me. Old hippies love things from the earth, crafted by the hands of men and women… Pottery, jewelry, arts and crafts, and cork closures.

What’s very interesting to me is in my Q&A sessions with wine writers. I ask this question,

What’s your favorite innovation in the wine industry over the past few years?

I’m willing to bet, without having to go back and read each answer, that 95 percent of the respondents answer that screw tops are the innovation that they most enjoy. I might even answer that one with the same answer, but I still love cork, too… most especially now that I’ve seen cork trees first hand, and stopped at a cork yard to take pictures of harvest. I now have a deeper appreciation of cork’s unique attributes.

In the WSJ story’s comments, of the 11 comments only one person wasn’t familiar with cork, and thought it might hurt the trees to harvest from them. Once she understood that it’s a natural process, she went in the direction of cork.

Madalena Santos wrote, “I just want to mention four advantages of the Cork:

The wine really needs to breathe

Cork is 100% recyclable and the plastic (zero)

Energy consumption of the plastic products cycle is much bigger

Plastic is not a natural product (see what happened in supermarkets – they have eliminated plastic bags because they were a threat to the environment)”

It’s an interesting discussion isn’t it? Personally speaking I think there is a lot to be said for consumer experience as well. While the environmental standpoint is certainly important, it’s hard to argue with most survey’s which clearly show that consumer prefer traditional cork closures for wine bottles-in increasing numbers as they move higher in price as well.

My favorite reason is that the cork industry is preserving and caretaking the natural cork forests and keeping that ecosystem and its various endangered, threatened and plan old awesome species intact.

And TCA is NOT the threat that people think it is. It’s rare and it’s not just from the closure.